A look at Open Source from outside of North America. What is the situation on Open Source in Armenia? What actions will be implemented at Yerevan State University library concerning Open Source? What are problems facing Armenian libraries, as well as those in Georgia and Azerbaijan, in creating digital repositories?

Tigran Zargaryan, Head of Automation at Yerevan State University library in Armenia

Ward Cunningham describes a wiki as â€œthe simplest online database that
could possibly workâ€. The cost of this simplicity is that wikis are
generally limited to a single collection containing a single kind of
record (viz. WikiMarkupLanguage records). WikiD extends the Wiki model
to support multiple WikiCollections containing arbitrary schemas of XML
records with minimal additional complexity. Furthermore, displays and
services can be customized on a per-collection basis.

I will articulate a framework that I am using to teach LIS students how to remix information with XML and web services. Because information remix comes across as a grab bag of techniques, students need a framework for learning a particular example of remix in depth so they can understand remixing in a broader context. In my talk, I will reflect on using Flickr as a paradigmatic example in elucidating remix to LIS students.

In the context of a research and prototyping project, the California Digital Library is using catalog content indexed in XTF, along with over 9 million historical circulation transaction records and other external data, to generate recommendations for an academic audience. Early results are promising. This talk will focus on methods, challenges, and plans for further development.

Libraries face tremendous challenges to create effective and responsive institutions in a Googlezon world. But the type of leadership we need so far hasnâ€™t materialized. If it isnâ€™t going to come from the administrators, let it come from the coders. In this talk I will build a case for establishing Code4Lib as a nonprofit library software cooperative. A financial structure would allow us to put real resourcesâ€”both financial and humanâ€”into bringing libraries into the 21st century.

You can do a lot in 1,000 lines of code. A retrieval system blending a Dewey browser and an interactive â€˜liveâ€™ search is presented which is currently implemented in about 1,000 lines. As the user types, the system searches for records, classifies those records into DDC categories, and displays them using standard protocols. The data structures needed to support this are computed in parallel using a Python implementation of map-reduce.

Other topics include discussing the reasoning behind OCLCâ€™s recent shift to using version 2.0 of the Apache License to release our open source software.

"Two Paths to Interoperable Metadataâ€ [1] proposed a model for metadata
translation that offers substantial gains over models based on the
current community standard, which usually involves an XSLT
implementation. In this presentation, I will discuss implementation
issues with the Semantic Equivalence Expression Language (Seel), our
alternative to XSLT [2]. I will show how Seel eases the complex task of
change management because it represents a more faithful computational
model of the metadata translation problem.

Using the TeraGrid1 and the SRB DataGrid2, we have sufficient
computational and storage facilities to run normally prohibitively
expensive processing tasks. By integrating text and data mining
tools3[4] within the Cheshire35 information architecture, we can
parse the natural language present in 20 million MARC records (the
University of Californiaâ€™s MELVYL collection) and extract information to
provide to search/retrieve applications. In this talk, weâ€™ll discuss
the results of applying new techniques to â€˜oldâ€™ data.

Digital libraries are supposed to foster reuse of digital content but it is hard to combine content from different sources. We are building prototype software that (1) converts different types of courseware to an XML interchange format based on OpenDocument and other specs/standards (2) enables the content to be disaggregated, recombined, re-styled and endowed with SCORM reporting behaviors and (3) realizes instructional design through the use of the SCORM (or IMS) Simple Sequencing. Will demo, discuss and am happy to talk about the bigger picture of reusability in educational digital libraries and standards if given a longer slot.